Knowledge that is gained through personal experience and communication through storytelling are both deeply rooted in the culture of African American women. Yet personal experience-based stories are largely absent from most cancer communication, even that developed specifically for African American women. This project seeks to enhance the effectiveness of breast cancer communication for African American women by capturing and sharing their lived experience with breast cancer through personal stories told in their own words. The study will evaluate the effectiveness of personal narratives in promoting breast cancer and mammography-related beliefs and behaviors, and at the same time test an explanatory model of how stories may achieve these effects. In the study, we will professionally videotape the stories of 80 African American women breast cancer survivors elicited through qualitative interviews about five breast cancer topic areas. Stories to be included in four 15-minute professionally produced videos will be selected by a Community Advisory Board and Expert Panel of African American women. In a longitudinal trial, 900 African American women from low-income neighborhoods will be randomly assigned to receive either these Story videos, other breast cancer videos using a general, rational, informational, and didactic (GRID) approach, or be assigned to a delayed intervention control group. The primary research goal is to assess the effectiveness of Story videos compared to GRID videos and to a control condition in increasing breast cancer and mammography knowledge and beliefs, mammography-related behaviors, and mammography adherence at 3-, 9-, and 18-month follow-ups. In addition, the study will test our new proposed model of narrative cancer communication effects in African American women. To date, no study has compared the effects of story-based cancer communication to non-story approaches, nor has any study provided evidence for the mechanism by which stories are effective. Developing a better understanding of if and how culturally based approaches to cancer communication work will enhance efforts to reduce racial disparities in breast cancer.